Posted
by
timothyon Sunday May 01, 2005 @07:02PM
from the early-registration-discouraged dept.

usermilk writes "Some folks at MIT are holding a time-travelers' convention. The idea is to make it so famous and so widely-known that even thousands of years in the future, people will still know exactly when and where this time-traveler convention went down, and will all come travel to it at some point in their illustrious time-traveling careers. For those interested in attending, it's on May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC) in the East Campus Courtyard at MIT. 42:21:36.025N, 71:05:16.332W (42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)."

Hm, first time that the wikipedia detractors make sense to me - I know they take their NOPV thing seriously, but shouldn't there be some sort of "stupid hoax considered a stupid hoax until proven otherwise" rule?

Striving to represent all sides of an issue is one thing, but those who believe a lame hoax and those who don't, do not two valid sides of an issue make.

I mean, come on: "there are discrepancies between Titor's claims of the future and actual events"? Oh really, cause it all looked pretty solid to

I've read through their discussion and changelog, I think one more person coming along with "Shh! grownups are talking" will yet again be met with "if someone believes it for whatever reason, it's a valid opinion" line of thinking.

It's really more the attitude in general rather than this silly article that worries me.

I mean, if I claim that I have invisible aliens called Dvutels living in my attic, who only communicate with me, and only telepathically; I have presented exactly as much evidence for my story as the time traveler has, so would wikipedia be obliged to fairly represent my side in this matter?

I can even provide a picture [hemscott.net] of my attic to show that they are invisible. Oh, I can also provide a rich and evocative description of their homeworld and its history, to strengthen my case.

I've read through their discussion and changelog, I think one more person coming along with "Shh! grownups are talking" will yet again be met with "if someone believes it for whatever reason, it's a valid opinion" line of thinking.

Yeah, it's a rather strange phenomenon. "Fair and balanced" means presenting both sides of a case, even when one side is obviously right (or at least more right), and one side is wrong. The John Titor case is one of those (obviously a very artful hoax). Intelligent Design vs.

I'd rather hear both sides and be free to make my own choices and decisions. If the idea of free speech worries you, then you worry me.

This has nothing to do with free speech (or even Free Speech) whatsoever. Free speech guarantees your right to hold and voice an opinion, unmolested by the powers that be. This concept is often warped into the notion that it obviates the need to defend such an opinion, or that merely holding it requires others to recognize it as valid.

Nobody is even remotely pondering curtailing the "Titorites"' rights to self expression. What I have a problem with is that the editors of the particular article, in their treatment of the subject matter are giving far too much credence to this particular crackpot theory. They do this in the laudible pursuit of neutrality, but in this case that leads to a product that reflects negatively on the project as a whole.

Free speech does not mean the abandonment of objective reasoning. Neutral point of view does not mean that wikipedia editors should parrot everything they read on the internet.

Oh and thank you for providing a link to the article on free speech - how deliciously patronizing.

Hmm, never heard of this guy until now. It was interesting to read. However, it's almost certain that this is a hoax, albeit done by an intelligent and talented man. What he did was trying to turn insightful predictions into something that people would actually be interested in. Time travel speaks to the imagination of many people, insightful predictions don't. He just used the time travel story as a vehicle to try to make people aware of what is going wrong in our current world. Most of his predictions are

According to the WP article, the future hates us. If he really was from the future, you'd think he'd have a little more tact. There are few bullies that can affect the people of the future more profoundly than the directed anger of six billion forbears.

I found the John Titor episode very interesting. Many people have characterised him as a hoax, but I think that's unfair. I think it was a very clever piece of Internet performance art, anticipating alternate games like I Love Bees.

My hat is off to the guy. He's made me think a lot about how future generations will judge our current culture, which I think was the main point of the exercise.

It reminds me a bit of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. It was unfair to call that a "hoax" because a hoaxer expects you to believe their bullshit. Chuck Barris was trying to make a point through a clever piece of alternate-reality fiction. Much the same as John Titor, whoever he really was.

I play an alternate personality on a message board other than slashdot, and do what some people would refer to as trolling, but I and at least several others who don't know my true identity, think it's a form of performance art/humour. Many people find my routine funny, and although I should be irritating in how I portray myself, I give enough clues than I'm not as dumb as I come across, and that is humourous to people.
John Titor is a performance comic/troll, which sounds to me like an interesting guy/gro

Really, they've got to schedule it sometime in advance so they could arrange for hotel room space. A few people will show up yesterday anyway just to grab the weekly rate, but they'll probably bop in, hand over their credit card, and not spend much time in the room until next weekend. And the waiting line at Mary Chung's will just be outrageous...

Been there done that...it wasn't that good. John Titor got drunk and they had to call the campus police. He began yelling about having had sexual relations with the police officers grandmothers and granddaughters. They tazered him and after that the party kind of broke up. Now the 2033 Convention, now *THAT* was a party.

Everyone acts like a thousand years is the equivalent of "yesterday". The very concept that in thousands of years everyone will even know about one particular nerd party, is at best a joke.

You know how long a thousand years is? Columbus discovering America is _half_ that time ago.

A thousand years ago, the Vikings were still getting converted to Christianity. Do you know where the big parties have been at this time? If I told you that Bjarni Hrolfsson and Erik Karlsson (made up viking names) had this fabulous party 1000 years ago, would you even know when and where to go?

Heck, would you have even heard about it? History tends to recall more like royal events and wars from that long ago. We know roughly when and where the saxon earl Harold Goodwinson fought the Vikings and we know where he later lost to William of Normandie. But do you know exactly where some vikings or normans from back then had a party? I don't think so.

Roughly a thousand years ago, we had the first crusade. We remember that because it's a bloody big war... went awfully wrong, with a bloody huge PR, but even then a lot of details are missing.

Roughly a thousand years ago, temperatures peaked _higher_ than they are today. In fact so high that Greenland thawed and was green enough to be called that. The Vikings could farm it.

That's a bloody huge event even on history scale, but even the vast majority the global-warming scare gang doesn't know about it. (E.g., that it happened without driving SUVs. Or that no, all that molten ice did _not_ kill all fish life, and did _not_ reverse the gulf stream either.)

Roughly a thousand years ago, Leif Eriksson decided to sail west from Greenland, to check out Bjarni Herjolfsson's story that he's seen land there. And he discovered America. That's a bloody huge event, and even about that we have little more than a saga and some ruins that sorta look like a Viking village. And even that's _one_ of the landfalls that Leif made.

So what makes anyone think that a nerd party would go into every history book for millenia?

"What you are forgetting is that in this day and age, more information is being recorded and stored each day than ever before.In a hundred years, I would expect for us to at least have some sort of storage media that is unaffected by time."

Point well taken, but the summary said _thousands_ of years. In which case, sorry, nope.

Don't forget that a lot of information before had been engraved on metal, carved on wood (which is why runes look the way they look: they were designed for carving into wood), or ins

hmm...things to remember:1. if a time travel came back in time and altered the past, no one would know but him/her.2. it is impossible to prove that our recorded history now is the same as it was 1 second ago due to rule number 1.3. You may be caught in a temporal causality loop, doomed forever to repeat the same period of time over and over.4. If time is an expression of entropy, then the only way to travel through time is to prefectly reverse entropy, which is impossible because, iirc, entropy is chaotic.5. If the universe is nonlinear, or rather, linear is an illusion, then there is no past or future to travel to, but only the present wich exists at any instant as a snapshot in the cascade towards greater entropy.6. The universe is moving towards a state of pure heat, at which time entropy will cease, as all engery, which drives entropy, will have been used. if you intend to travel through time by altering the universe around you, then you can not go past this point, or ever return. if you time travel by using internal independent means, then you may travel past this point, but you would no longer have any external means of measuring the passage of time in the universe. To time travel through external means you must increase the general entropy of the universe such that all events happen faster outside your time machine. to travel through time internaly you must slow down your own entropy. in both instances you must phase away from the universe such that you do not exist in it, lest you collide with something going faster than you can percieve.7 If time is a seperate dimension then you must find a way to travel in the direction that is forwards or backwards from where you are now. 4 dimensional travel occurs at a steady, measurable rate. As you approach the speed of light, this rate of passage decreases. Thus, it is logical to assume that by exceeding the speed of light in our universe of spacetime you would travel backwards in time.8. You may be your own great great grandparent.9. If you change your own past you can not go back to your own future to reap the benifits because the new future would have a new you to match it.10. Journeyman Project is t3h roxors!!!!!

Think of it this way, the way something happened, is the way it happened. If you travel back in time, then you're participating in events however, your paticipation would already have happened. Therefore, anything you've already done would already have happened.

Think of it this way. You couldn't go back in time and shoot Hilter before he got into power for the very simple reason that it didn't happen. Say you setup a sniper rifle on a building. You could try to fire but you'd either miss, the gun would jam, you'd get arrested, have a heart-attack etc. etc.

This isn't the universe trying to protect itself or any such mystical mumbo jumbo. It's just the simple fact that a thing didn't happen and your actions in trying to change the past are already part of history.

I'm sure you meant to say that if you travel back in time to shoot hitler, you could in fact shoot him, just that once you left on your mission to shoot him you could never return to that same place because that place exists in a relative path from a place where hitler was not shot.

Of course if you could transcend time and thus travel freely thru the infinite possible dimensions, why would you want to go and shoot hitler.. the dimension in which you shoot hitle

I've actually never seen 12 monkeys. I probably wont now that I know it's based on a 12 year olds perception of time travel. Your gun would jam or you'd have a heart attack? Thats nonsense.. wouldn't your time machine break and you wouldn't be able to even try, after all there's no documented history of an attempt on his life or ANY time travellers for that matter.

Are you a time traveller? Didn't think so. I am, in fact, a time traveller. What happens once you leave this dimension to travel to another one

Actually, that is a misrepresentation of the movie. It does not do anything silly like gun-jamming or heart attack. What's interesting (partial spoiler) is that Bruce Willis' character actually generates the reason for him being sent back in time. It is one of my all time favorite movies due to the complex story nature, Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt's excellent acting ability and Terry Gilliam's genius. Ultimately the mission is accomplished and the people from the future do change the past. Of course the

Well if you think that it is impossible to change the past, then you have to conclude that it is impossible to change the future too because your future is somebody else's past. Which means the way your life turns out has already been determined and cannot be changed. How do you fit free will into that?

Everything you do and think is based on the electrochemical reactions in your brain. If we understood how all the wiring of the brain works, and understood all the inputs the output could be predicted. There is no freewill, just a reaction to a given series of inputs.

If we understood how all the wiring of the brain works, and understood all the inputs the output could be predicted.

Are you sure? If quantum mechanics are involved in any meaningful way, then some of the events may be literally random (i.e. not a function of any observable input). In that case, even perfect knowledge of the inputs and the wiring would be insufficient.

I think "Time is an illusion" is an easier way to say it. If you have a picture you and a friend are looking at, and he wonders if the right side can ever travel to the left side and modify things, you'd wonder what he was talking about. I would argue that time is like that: static if viewed from enough dimensions, available for observation (in theory) as one massive N dimensional statue.

Going back in time and changing the past is akin to trying to lift yourself up off of the ground. Both are equally impossible and equally silly; it's just that people understand space better than time, it's not quite so obvious.

It's not so much an illusion, it's more of an abstract. You cannot travel in time because there is no such thing.

So, what is time? Well, it first started out as a way for man to determine when to plant crops. It later was used by man for navigation & transport, at a time where different villages were on different time zones (sundials). Now we measure it by counting the vibrations of an atom. The key thing is that man was present at each step. We feel so confident about it, we have even created a "Univ

actually the entire premise of the convention is flawed because the current model of time traveled dictated by relativity suggests that one cannot travel backwards in time past the point where the time machine was discovered/invented.

Dont forget the multiverse, aka, the great tree of possibilities. Consider this, going back in time may be likened to moving back down the tree, and when you change something, a new branch forms and you start moving along that, parallel to the old branch. now your stuck in the new branch. The implication here is that nothing you do to alter time will truly alter time, it will just launch you along a new limb of the tree. You arent changing the past, your creating a new future.

I've always wanted to know why anyone would risk changing the past, I mean if I were to go back in time and kill Hitler as a child then perhaps the world would not have had WWII which would be good in the short run but it would mean that most countries probably wouldn't figure out that having all out war is bad for everyone involved. If war was staved off for a little while and weapons got more powerful then the next war they had would be even more devistating.

We speak of "time" because it's convenient. It allows us to measure our lives and our activities against a single background. We keep track of "time" by observing the predictable patterns of celestial objects, as well as by setting mechanical devices to synchronize with those celestial movement cycles.

But what exactly is "time"? Time is a series of events. Nothing more. You can't undo things in real life. A broken vase can't be put back together just by reversing the event that caused it to break. Why? Because events are irreversible. You can cause a negating event for some things (like turning a light on or off), but you can never undo an event once it's done.

So, simply put, time doesn't exist. It's merely perception of a series of events. The fact that it's perception is made clear by the phrase "time flies when you're having fun." Your brain records images of events into your memory, sometimes with a record of celestial body locations or numeric representations thereof.

The more interested you are in what is happening around you, the more things your brain will record. But having limited processing resources, it will skip the "timestamp" on many of those events. The relative difference between each "timestamp" is much farther apart than is expected or normal, so "time flies."

When you're disinterested in events around you, the opposite is true. Your brain records some meaningless drivel and since it has lots of resources available, it slaps a "timestamp" on every one of those mental notes. Boring stuff seems to take much longer because of this.

Let's see the writers for the next Star Trek series (several years from now, I hear) put this tidbit of time-travel logic to work. It'll at least spare us some crappy re-hashes of Nazis in space (spaaaaaaaaaaaace?).

Problem is, you wouldn't even have to shoot Hitler or anything drastic like that. Just existing for any amount of time could make huge changes happen over time, which is somewhat explained by the Butterfly Effect [wikipedia.org].

Now, here's the tricky part: what if I decide not to go in the past and me going into the past is part of history? That would change history and oh I've gone crosseyed.

Since I'm not a big fan of predetermined fate, I must assume that no one may go in the past of their own dimension. The two seem to go hand-in-hand as far as I see.

Lister: Hey, it hasn't happened, has it? It has "will have going to have happened" happened, but it hasn't actually "happened" happened yet, actually. Rimmer: Poppycock! It will be happened; it shall be going to be happening; it will be was an event that could will have been taken place in the future. Simple as that. Your bucket's been kicked, baby.

If no time travellers turn up on May 7th, will everyone stop promoting it after the date?

Personally I would have thought it'd make sense to give a bit more advanced notice than a week, if only to give people a chance to get the word around more beforehand (thus more likely to be archived).

If no time travellers turn up on May 7th, will everyone stop promoting it after the date?

No, it will be continually duped on slashdot until a time machine is invented. That way no one will ever forget about it, and the editors have an excuse for the dupe. MIT probably planned it this way becuase they knew slashdot would carry it for the next 50,000 years.

I'm a time traveller. Unfortunately, you can't tell, because I travel through time with the help of an angel and an invisible lech, and the process causing me to appear identical to someone in the time I'm travelling to.

It could be a ruse... the organizers may be stranded time travellers trying to send a message to the future to get rescued now. It may not be a genuine convention, but rather a lifeboat technique for the Insiders.

- Legit costumes for whatever era. WW2 uniform, peasant outfit, etc- Monetary exchange: buy/sell money from different eras, at varying rates. You will always need money(depending on the time)- Fake IDs. Going back 20 years? get an ID 20 years prior to your birthday- Fake license plates. Travelling in an old car back to an earlier time? Get "legit" license plates that are either from the same car, or just some convincing out-of-state plates.

As long as you're travelling in time, you are in hyperspace therefore you can come out anywhere. Although you are right, you would want to calculate where you are going or you might end up in the _middle_ of the earth, which might be a little more unpleasant.

Thankfully, with Windows 64-bit edition coming out, we have adaquate memory addressing capabilties to model all of these possibilities.

-- Reaching the exact coordinates at the right instant, considering rotation and revolution of the planet, solar system, and galaxy.

-- Matching the velocity of that location (and timeframe) exactly.

It's not only useless to appear at the right instant in the right room if your body doesn't exactly match the inertial frame -- it would be fatal. Forgetting to account for just the earth's revolution around the sun would slam the traveller against the wall at 30km/sec.

The problem is - Einsteins theories don't permit a 'special' frame of reference. So you don't have any place to measure the 'absolute' motion of the earth *from*. Do you only consider the earth's motion in orbit around the sun - or do you also consider the suns' rotation around the galactic core? How about the motion of our galaxy relative to the other nearby galaxies? What about the expansion of the universe?

There is no absolute coordinate to dial into...it's a meaningless concept.

Even if someone time travelled into the past for a few seconds, wouldn't they wind up in the icy cold of space while the planet speeds along on its normal course around

Nah, because the rotation of the solar system around the galactic core, combined with the movement of the Milky Way (propelled out by the big bang, and pulled on by the gravity of various neighbouring galaxies) just happen to exactly cancel out the movement of the earth. This means that we are, in fact, absolutely fixed in position in space.

This is why the aliens keep coming here --- we are the only stable point in the universe where time travel can (safely) happen.

If you were really a time traveler, why would you want to show up at a known place on a known date? The government would be waiting with an awesome arsenal of firepower, waiting to forcefully take your tools from you.

Or if you're the big-business conspiracy theory type, substitute "government" for "private mercenaries."

Will there be an 'awesome aresenal of firepower' at the MIT campus next weekend? Highly doubtful. In either case, a time traveler from the future will know if the FBI/CIA/Army/corporate mercenaries showed up.

The correct tense might be "The government troops didn't show up, so it's safe to go."

Now I like a good sci-fi story as much as the next guy and love to watch my wife lose her mind over the loops a writer will go through to make a time-travel story "work". But a few years ago, something occurred to me which I don't think I've ever seen in any story anywhere. Mind you, this is more of a literary sci-fi critique, since time travel probably isn't possible for the many reasons laid out here.

So let's say you have yourself an Acme Time Machine, and it works. So you set it to transport you back in time 24 hours. Has no one ever considered that the earth has moved? Assuming for the moment that time travel is possible, if you do not calculate precisely where the earth is, and the location you want to go to, then you will most likely end up in space, but with a nasty possibility of "arriving" inside the earth (or possibly even the sun or some other body).

A time machine would have to also be an instantaneous space travel machine, capable of transporting you anywhere in the universe. I mean, if you can magically transport yourself the 17,640 mi (28,224 km) the earth will have moved in 24 hours, then whatever principle it uses will probably transport you over much greater distances.

I attend the "Time Travel" conference, but it is a near-disaster. As far as I can tell the conference is spectacularly devoid of time travellers and instead is full of wannabees wandering around speculating about time travel. Worse, there are glitches at the registration table forcing people to wait in long lines as the students try to get organized. The "food" leaves much to be desired as well, what there is of it. And about the conference sessions, the less I say, the better.

It certainly doesn't compare with the twin millennium celebrations on December 31, 999 and 1000, where the hostesses pull out all the stops to outdo one another. Now, those are parties!

WARNING:
Cubic time is proven fact and cannot be disputed. Nature's simultaneous 4-day cube proves that there are four parts to a day, and four days occuring always at the four corners of earth. 2x2=4, and people who insist in time as something that can be traveled think of THREE parts, past present and future, but there are in actuality FOUR parts, fact which is ignored by antiHarmony academia criminals. Time "theories" from people educated moronic in evil institutions are ignorant of the four corners of the time and of the world. Denying the existence of four-sided nature of time and universe is to ensure your own demise. You are stupid arrogant curse to all creatures of the planet.

Reminds me a bit of what my friends and I did back in high school/college (we were in a program called TAMS in which, for your last two years of high school, you went to college and stayed in a dorm). A few student groups were famous for spamming our mailboxes with notices for the meetings and posting their signs everywhere, and it was quite annoying.

So, as a countermeasure, we formed a "Time Travellers Club". We put out notices in everyone's boxes, first notifying people of an upcoming meeting a week prior, and the second time thanking everyone for such a large turnout at our meeting a week later. We got permission to post our own sign - a big hanging one that ha our group name, and its motto ("I'll See You Yesterday!").

Later, we found the notices on at least one RA's and one student's door - the student had apparently actually tried to go to the meeting that we thanked people for the turnout at, because they had it next to a note that said "I went, and it sucked!"

"So if there is no one present from the future theoretically we never figure out how to transend time."
Or the party on May 7th becomes famous throughout time as one of the most suck-ass parties in all history. So, time travelers decide to skip it.

Jesus is greek for Joshua... apparently Jesus's actual name... go fig - as the catholic church originally used greek as their official language until Pope Victor I [wikipedia.org] changed it to latin (his native language).

BTW, if you want good alternate history regarding Jesus - I highly recommend Chrisopher Moore's "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal".

Let's assume for the sake of argument, that this convention is discovered in a historylibrary of some sort (archives of/. perhaps), in the distant future by a timetraveler, and he decides to go.

When he does, he'll instantly split the timeline, and the one he came from will become a parallel universe to the one he's in when he attends the convention.Why? Because in order for a time traveler to notice it in the future, it will have to happen at least once without him. Ergo, if I were to go to this meeting, I would not meet a time traveler, because this is "my" timeline.However, if this were to happen, an alternate version of me would be able to meet the time traveler, because he came back in time, after having lived later in "my" timeline, where the convention took place without a visitor from the future.In fact, the moment he interacts with anything or anyone from our timeline when he arrives, is when the timeline splits, because he wasn't there the first time around. So unless he's already here in our timeline, which would make me the alternate version of me, then I won't meet him.It's more than likely nobody from the future will show up at the convention. Unless, like I said, we're already in the alternate timeline.

Also, when he goes back to the future, his timeline will have been altered and he may not even exist in the timeline he returns to; and he will have no way to get back to his own previous future timeline, unless he goes back again a little earlier and tells his alternate self to go back immediately without going to the convention - which of course would create a grandfather paradox, as he would then have no reason to tell himself not to go and the entire universe would simply cease to exist.

This only holds for a few specific theories of how time(travel) works.
Sort of a multi line/track switch theory you have for your explanation.
Now try and work it with single-line editing allowed and still explain away the 'paradox' that implies, for extra credit give two paradox solvers.:)
Time Travel is one of the more fun things to consider.
Wish I could remember if anyone fun showed up at this one.

Most likely, a time travel path would be along a line of freefall (geodesic). ie. Imagine if you could fall through the ground, wobbling back and forth from one side of the planet to the other.

For any given initial velocity, there would only be certain periodic times when you *wouldn't* end up inside the planet. And the position on the planet where you come out would also be problematic. If you're not satisfied with those precise times and places, then you can adjust your velocity a tad, to get another set of options.